Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Ant
Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects.
The most immediately noticeable difference between Ant and Make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, whereas Make uses Makefile format. By default the XML file is named build.xml
.
Ant is an Apache project. It is open source software, and is released under the Apache Software License.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="Hello" default="compile">
<target name="clean" description="remove intermediate files">
<delete dir="classes"/>
</target>
<target name="clobber" depends="clean" description="remove all artifact files">
<delete file="hello.jar"/>
</target>
<target name="compile" description="compile the Java source code to class files">
<mkdir dir="classes"/>
<javac srcdir="." destdir="classes"/>
</target>
<target name="jar" depends="compile" description="create a Jar file for the application">
<jar destfile="hello.jar">
<fileset dir="classes" includes="**/*.class"/>
<manifest>
<attribute name="Main-Class" value="HelloProgram"/>
</manifest>
</jar>
</target>
</project>
Manual: Apache Ant manual (tasks, types)